Revenge at Horseshoe Bend

News of the August 30 massacre of nearly five hundred settlers, soldiers and slaves at Fort Mims by Creek Indians, also known as Red Sticks, spread rapidly throughout the Mississippi Territory in the late summer of 1813. It was the ultimate fear of every settler—to be killed, or worse, captured and tortured until death granted mercy. The names of the dead were reported, and some shook their heads in recognition. Descriptions of the grisly murders did not need to be exaggerated; they were too horrible without it. All over the territory, which would soon become the states of Mississippi and Alabama, residents warily made preparations for battle, just in case.

On October 7, less than two months after the Fort Mims massacre, the dreaded news that the Creek Indians were on the warpath again came to the residents of Huntsville. Word spread that the Creeks were within a day’s ride of the town. Instantly, panic spread throughout the community. Kettles were left to boil over open fires in the kitchens as women grabbed their children to run toward Nashville. Mules were left in the fields, still hitched to the plows, and horses were hastily saddled, if at all, for a quick escape. In their panic, some grabbed other people’s children and left their own, hoping that a good Samaritan would save them.

Soon the road was crowded with people running for their lives, anxious to put as much distance as possible between them and the hostile Creeks. The image of being scalped, mutilated and tortured was burned into their minds, and they called to everyone along the way to hurry and join them to seek safety in Tennessee.

The cause for this panic turned out to be a hoax. History does not record who brought the cruel rumor to Huntsville, but although the alleged attack was not real, the threat surely was. Something had to be done to quell the violent Indians.

General Andrew Jackson was recovering from a wound he had received in a duel when he heard the news about Fort Mims and the scare at Huntsville. Although his shoulder had been shattered and he was undoubtedly in great pain, he immediately went to work on plans to gather his militia for a journey into the Creek Indian lands.

From his home near Winchester, Tennessee, David Crockett heard the news of Fort Mims and gathered his guns and ammunition. His wife, Polly, begged him not to leave his family, but he reminded her that if something weren’t done immediately, the Indians would eventually kill his own family in their home. He refused to wait for his wife to give him consent. Crockett went to Winchester to answer the call to muster.

Jackson and his men marched thirty-two miles in nine hours to arrive on October 11 in Huntsville, where they encamped at the present-day intersection of Holmes Avenue and Lincoln Street. Among the local men who put their lives on hold to join General Jackson was Dr. Thomas Fearn, who served as a battalion surgeon and personally tended General Jackson as he continued his recovery from the earlier duel. Dr. Fearn had studied medicine in Philadelphia and had only been in Huntsville about two years when he joined Jackson’s men. Dr. Henry Chambers served as a surgeon on General Jackson’s staff and had an ambitious political future ahead for him. Major Neal Rose, a Scotsman who later became owner of the Planters’ Hotel, served in the quartermaster’s department.

Major Gibson and his men were camped at Beatty’s Spring (present-day Brahan Spring in Huntsville). He asked for two scouts to travel with him across the Tennessee River to spy on the Indians and their movements. Crockett volunteered his skills as a woodsman and rifleman. The next morning, they crossed Ditto Landing and, later that night, met up with an Indian trader who would be their guide. Early the following morning, the thirteen men were divided into two groups, and they agreed to meet fifteen miles beyond with information they had gleaned. The two groups moved cautiously through the Creeks’ hunting grounds, staying away from known roads. Later that night, the men met up again. Having learned nothing of value, the men decided to press on. Crockett arrived at the home of a white man who was married to a Creek woman. Ten Creek warriors had left the house less than one hour before Crockett’s arrival.

Crockett and his team pressed on and came upon two slaves who had been captured by the Creeks. One was sent back to Ditto Landing to give his story to Jackson and his men, while the other went with Crockett back to the camp of friendly Creek Indians. The slave, who was fluent in the Creek language, was able to find out that they were expecting a large war party at any moment. The plan of the Creek Indians was to annihilate General Jackson and his army.

Immediately, Crockett and his scouts saddled their horses and ran at full gallop back to warn the militia. Within a day, they reached the camp of Colonel John Coffee, who listened—unimpressed. Crockett was angry that Coffee didn’t regard his news as important. He was angrier still when Major Gibson returned the next day with the same information. This time, Coffee listened and believed the news.

The Creek Indians were engaged and defeated at Tallushatchee on November 3 by Colonel John Coffee’s men and, on November 11, at Hillabee by General White’s men.

In the frenzy of the battle, an orphaned baby was discovered by one of Jackson’s men. The surviving Creek women refused to take the baby, who cried from hunger and need of comfort. The baby was kept alive with a gruel made of brown sugar, water and crumbled biscuits. Though Andrew Jackson could be tough as nails when he needed to be, he also had a tender side, and so it was then that he decided to adopt the baby named Lincoya and raise the son of his enemy as his own.

Jackson wrote to his wife, Rachel, in December to prepare her for the new addition to the family:

He is the only branch of his family left, and the others, when offered to them to take care of, would have nothing to do with him, but wanted him to be killed…Quals, my interpreter, carried him on his back and brought him to me. Charity and Christianity says he ought to be taken care of and I send him to my little Andrew and I hope will adopt him as one of our family.

Lincoya was sent to Huntsville to live at the LeRoy Pope household until arrangements could be made to get him to Nashville.

On November 13, an incident occurred that is retold to schoolchildren to this day. Captain Samuel Dale, a tall Virginian who spent much of his life trading with the Creeks, along with about seventy of his men, set out to drive the hostile Indians out of the region of the lower Alabama River so that settlers could gather their crops in safety. Most of his men had been sent across the river to the western bank in two canoes. Captain Dale and eleven of his men were still on the eastern bank when they heard the warning that Indians were approaching. A large canoe, carrying eleven Indians, floated downstream. Two of the Indians jumped out of the canoe and began to swim to shore. One was shot, the other escaped. The remaining nine Indians lay flat on the bottom of the canoe to avoid gunfire, and the white men assumed they were wounded or dead. Captain Dale ordered the men from the opposite side to get into the large canoe and approach the Indians. The white men turned and went back to shore when they discovered the Indians were alive. Dale was incensed at his own men and jumped into the smaller canoe on his side of the river to attack the Indians himself.

Captain Dale, along with James Smith, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Austill and a black man named Caesar, who operated the canoe ferry, quickly reached the nine Indians in the large canoe. One of the Indians recognized Dale and shouted, “Now for it, big Sam!”

Caesar held the two canoes together while the hand-to-hand combat commenced. The priming, used to ignite the gunpowder, was wet, rendering the weapons useless, except for the bayonets. Those who had no bayonets used the stock end as clubs. The ensuing battle was fierce. The Indians cheered their own from one side of the river as Dale’s men cheered from the other side.

When the fighting ended, the bodies of the nine Indians were tossed into the river. The four men in the smaller canoe escaped with minor injuries.

The Creek Indian Wars continued. On November 29, the Indians were defeated at Attassee by General Floyd’s men, at Talladega by General Jackson’s men and, on December 23, at Eccanachaca by General Claiborne’s men. The Indians had been told by their prophets that the earth would swallow the white men who dared to enter the Holy Ground, and so their confidence began to crumble when this was proven false.

The army began again in January 1814 with a defeat at Emuckfau by Jackson’s men on January 18 and again on the twenty-fourth at Enotochopco. Jackson’s army had been fortified by the addition of friendly Creek and Cherokee warriors, and certainly, had it not been for them, Jackson’s army would have been defeated.

The winter had been difficult for Jackson and his men. Jackson suffered from malaria, dysentery and pulmonary hemorrhaging. At six feet, one inch tall, his weight would sometimes plummet to 120 pounds. Still, he thought of his suffering men and sometimes gave his horse to a sick man while he walked through the mud for miles. He even gave his own food to the sick. At one particularly low point, some of the men threatened to leave. One man, determined to make General Jackson personally aware of their misery, found Old Hickory seated on a log eating acorns. General Jackson listened patiently to the man’s complaints, then reached into his pocket and offered him the only food the general himself had, more acorns. It made a lasting impact on the young soldier, who went back to the others and reported that the general himself was suffering as much as they were.

Because the initial sixty-day enlistment was now expired by over one month, some of the men, including David Crockett, left the camp and headed home. While some did not return, Crockett gathered more provisions, newer clothing and more horses and headed back to General Jackson’s camp.

In March, the Creeks established their camp in the bend of the Tallapoosa River (near present-day Alexander City) known as Horseshoe Bend. Log and brush fortifications were built, but the prophets continually reminded the Creeks that the white man could not conquer them. The encampment was surrounded on three sides by water, with no way out. Approximately one thousand Creeks set to work constructing an earthworks system for protection during an assault. But General Jackson was “determined to exterminate them.” When he saw the physical layout of their camp, he remarked, “They have penned themselves up for slaughter.”

Jackson sent John Coffee and his men on the early morning of March 27 to surround the Indians on the far sides of the Tallapoosa River to prevent their escape by water. Spies in Coffee’s assemblage crossed the river and destroyed the Creeks’ canoes. They set fires on the outside edges of the encampment to signal the beginning of the bloody, final battle.

The regular army, under the direction of Colonel Williams and Major Montgomery, began the assault. Twenty-eight-year-old Major Montgomery led the charge and was the first man to climb the breastworks of the Creek stronghold. As he raised his sword to rally his men to follow, a bullet through his head killed him instantly. Jackson’s Guard, the Tennessee Militia, charged into the horseshoe itself, while Coffee’s men charged from the river. The men of Jackson’s Guard, wearing top hats as part of their official uniforms, had the only artillery.

The Creeks placed the captured slaves from Fort Mims in the front lines to receive the first gunfire. They had hoped that the white soldiers would spare the slaves while the Indians stalled for more time. But with the memory of Fort Mims still fresh in their minds, the militia did not stop until every Creek warrior—reported to be over one thousand—was dead. Jackson had lost thirty-two men, while the friendly Creeks lost five and the Cherokees were down by eighteen. Witnesses said that the river’s water ran red with the blood of the slain men. Before long, the battle—and the Creek Indian Wars—was finally over.

A young army officer named Sam Houston had been wounded by an arrow to his leg as one of the first soldiers to reach the log fortifications constructed by the Creeks. He remarked that when the sun set that evening, “it set over the ruin of the Creek Nation.”

William Weatherford, also known as Red Eagle and chief of the Creek Indians, was ordered to be brought to General Jackson as a prisoner. He arrived at Jackson’s tent willingly. Jackson was surprised at his audacity and informed Weatherford that he deserved death for the inhumane conduct at Fort Mims. Weatherford surprised Jackson when he replied, “I am in your power, do with me as you please. I am a soldier. I have done the whites all the harm I could. I have fought them and fought them bravely. If I had an army I would yet fight. I would contend to the last. My people are all gone. I can only weep over the misfortunes of my nation.

General Jackson answered, “You are at liberty to depart unmolested. You may place yourself at the head of your war party again and fight us as hard as you please, but if you fall into our hands, you will receive no mercy. The only safety for you and your people is in unconditional submission.”

The Creek chief acknowledged that there was no other choice for the Creeks and agreed to surrender according to the conditions laid out by General Jackson. He asked that Jackson give food to the starving Creek women and children who were hiding in the woods, and Jackson agreed without hesitation.

In early May, General Jackson and his men arrived, as a triumphant army, in Huntsville. A grand celebration was held in their honor at the home of LeRoy Pope, and toasts were made to the heroes of Horseshoe Bend.

Lincoya was raised in privilege at the Hermitage, though at times he had tendencies to revert to the habits of his Native American ancestors. He was known to chase the chickens with a bow and arrow while wearing a headdress made of turkey feathers. Jackson had hoped to have him enrolled at West Point Military Academy, but according to some sources, his Indian heritage caused him to be denied admission.

When Lincoya was fourteen, Jackson took him to Nashville to pursue a trade. Lincoya decided to work as an apprentice saddle maker, and he rode his horse home to the Hermitage on weekends. Sadly, he became ill and died, possibly from pneumonia, at the age of sixteen.

Major Lemuel Montgomery, who died at the first charge of Horseshoe Bend, was honored when Montgomery County was named for him. Ironically, the city of Montgomery was named for his ancestor, who died in the struggle for American independence.

One year after the war started, the remaining Creek Indians signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson. General Andrew Jackson would go on to become president of the United States and would order the controversial forced removal of Indians along what became known as the Trail of Tears. In 2006, Jackson’s home, the Hermitage, was designated as a historic site relating to the Trail of Tears. David Crockett and Sam Houston entered politics and left Tennessee to seek their fortunes in the republic of Texas.